10- & 25-Player Raid Loot Changes – Patch 5.2

The reason it takes more time than 10 mans is every pve hero is already locked out to a random 10 man dungeon. If there were just 25 mans it'd be much easier. MMO's are meant to be MMOS not, my 5 friends picked up 3 pugs and herp derped to victory.

I think the issue that needs to be addressed is the "small chance to drop" part.

There have been several suggestions such to adjust this. I just want to add in my two cents in. I liked the idea you guys did for the Asian servers in providing a automatic 2/4 drop and people would upgrade from there. I liked the idea of having 25-mans always have a 1/2 upgrade in place when they drop. Which will give 25-mans a bit more incentive to run. There is also the ability to increase the chance to drop to very high on 25-mans compared to 10-mans. Such a providing 25-mans 50% chance to dropping these Thunderforged items while only providing 20% or so chance for 10-mans

Critho, I am wondering if you guys have considered the fact that if you tune 10 man and 25 man to the same level in this scenario, encounters will ultimately be easier for 25 man raids than for 10 man raids because they will have an overall higher ilvl of gear?

That's the point I think. 25 man raiding is harder in large part because of no shows. No shows are linked to failure. Less failure means less no shows which will make it easier for 25s. 10 man raids have the same issue but to a much lesser extent. So the (I think hidden) goal is to make content for 25s easier than 10s.

The reason it takes more time than 10 mans is every pve hero is already locked out to a random 10 man dungeon. If there were just 25 mans it'd be much easier. MMO's are meant to be MMOS not, my 5 friends picked up 3 pugs and herp derped to victory.

Again your idea is fun is subjective to others and my own. I don't want to be forced to do 25 man's. Your idea is an extreme and shouldn't be taken to heart.

Not sure I like the idea of tier pieces being inherently 6 itemlevels behind the highest level items in that raid mode. Means they'll need some pretty rockin' set bonuses to actually be worth using. Might destroy the iconic nature of class sets.

Critho, I am wondering if you guys have considered the fact that if you tune 10 man and 25 man to the same level in this scenario, encounters will ultimately be easier for 25 man raids than for 10 man raids because they will have an overall higher ilvl of gear?

That's the point I think. 25 man raiding is harder in large part because of no shows. No shows are linked to failure. Less failure means less no shows which will make it easier for 25s. 10 man raids have the same issue but to a much lesser extent. So the (I think hidden) goal is to make content for 25s easier than for 10s.

I think the problem being disregarded is this. Why are people not showing? At the end of the day, its likely because something about their 25 man raid simply isn't fun. And all the RNG drops in the world aren't likely to fix that problem.

25 man Normal needs to be slightly less difficult than it is currently and have CROSS REALM ENABLED so that 25-man PUGS are a reality for everyone instead of just the top 10-15 servers that house the majority of the hardcore raiders. THAT would save 25-man raiding, but perhaps not 25-man raiding guilds...it would be a bunch of 10 man guilds running PUGS, but I don't see anything wrong with that as it is what made WotLK raiding FUN.

I just wonder about the tuning of the bosses, will this make 25 boss easier if the bosses are tuned around the same level of the thunderforged? Will it be the same for 10 man? Will 10 man progression will be stopped on the fact that they need thunderforged in order to progress? I just don't feel that those changes are an solution, 25 man already gears faster and 10 man have to deal with RNG all the time, adding them more RNG just sounds terrible idea.

Last thing is that if you get to stop having 25s complaining that will just get the 10s ones to, I just hope the thunderforged gear is existant, and not ghostly for 10 man.

I don't see this saving 25 mans. Vodka/Exo just merged because the player base is drying up. You have 4 or 5 super servers where everyone flocks to while the rest slowly die. An increased % to get 6 more ilvl won't cut it. Something more drastic needs to be done.

But aren't they leaving because of burnout ? What fix can you do to 25man raiding that fixes burnout ?

I shouldn't be forced to do 10 mans, which is how it is with the current state of the game. Too many chiefs not enough Indians.

You are not forced though. By your logic you are basically going from one supposed extreme to an actual extreme. I haven't said *Remove 25 man raiding* or make it only 10 man raiding now have I? No I haven't, you are forcing your own epic experience onto others and while I am not.

We’ve also received a lot of feedback regarding 25-player raids, and have been looking for ways to address some concerns. Ever since we changed 10-player raids to drop the same item level as 25s, we’ve seen a steady decline in 25-player raiding. This isn’t surprising. A 25-player raid takes an extra level of logistical commitment for the officers of those groups. It’s unfortunately easy for a 25-player guild to collapse down into a 10-player guild, but very unlikely for the opposite to happen. However, we like 25-player raiding and don’t want to see it go away. Like many players, we love the epic feeling that comes with banding together more massive groups to battle powerful foes, we love that there’s opportunity for those groups to try out new players or unusual comps without causing a huge burden, and we want to support the larger raiding guilds. That said, we’re also concerned that over-rewarding the 25-player guilds—if, for example, we went back to a higher item level across the board for 25s, as was the case for Icecrown Citadel—would feel like a slap in the face to the many 10-player raiders out there, who are the majority of our Normal and Heroic raiders.

And you realized this and implemented a fix far beyond the time when such a fix could be effective. On many servers 25s are already dead, and due to 10s being prominent, you need 3 10man groups to form a viable 25man raid team. The added chance at 6ilvl higher loot won't make this happen.

Split lockouts however, have a shot to make some of these supergroups form. If you split 10 and 25man lockouts, you give these 10man groups the opportunity to still raid within their 10man group, but also to coalesce into a 25man group once a week with a tri-guild treaty if you will. That has the only shot of reviving 25s, by not penalizing the current sets of 10mans, but allowing them to explore and re-fall in love with 25man raiding. Without this coming to fruition, 25s will continue to dwindle and die out.

As a GM, RL, and officer of fairly organized, hardcore and progression minded guilds since BC til the present, I can give you my unique experience, having done both 25m and 10m guilds from the top, being quite experienced with the politics involved in running a guild of any type.

As people have been saying time and again, the officers (and let's face it, every guild has extraneous officers, there's only the handful who make the 'real' decisions) always take the blame with loot drama.

Running 25mans, while arguably a bit easier to actually raid lead [depending on boss of course, but generally speaking, from a purely RL point of view, 25s are easier], are infinitely more difficult from a logistics and human resources point of view. I swear I, and probably the majority of other 25m raid leaders/officers, spend more time holding hands and calming down the masses than spending actual time figuring out how to kill bosses.

This proposed system will just aggravate the problem on both ends. You will get all sorts of point hoarding on the 25 man (why ask for an item when the TF version is for sure gonna drop next week and that idiot holy pally is gonna get the mace if I take the normal this week). You will have all sorts of butt hurt people (I can't believe so and so got both TF and normal).

And then what about the gray areas? Example: as a brewmaster monk, one of the best trinkets for us is the [item="bottle of infinite stars" /]. Because it's a bigger upgrade to dps, say it drops normal. I pass to hunter, then rogue. A week or two pass, and we get caster drops. Then the TF version drops. A week or two pass. Well, we're cutting close to enrage timers. I pass to rogue, then hunter. A couple weeks later, we're doing it heroic, and the heroic version drops. Again new enrage timers, I pass to them. A few weeks later, the Heroic TF drops, and I continue passing.

Because you see, in all cases, it *IS* a bigger upgrade overall for them, and I have some other choices. But you can see how after 2 or 3 months of seeing it drop, and doing the "right" thing for the raid, means I get to see up to 8 of them drop before I even get one. You can say, "well why don't you take one?" But that's the point, if I was selfish and only thought of myself, I would. But when it is a bigger upgrade for the raid, I wouldn't. But that doesn't make it any less painful for me.

This is just one example, it can happen with any number of classes/roles, for any number of items. Throw in alt roles [after all, you have to outfit your flex healer/dps, or flex tank/dps with pretty good items]. Do you give a normal to TF upgrade to main specs, or do you give the TF version to the secondary spec?

These are not questions easily answered. These are, in fact, questions made much more difficult due to increased complexity.

I for one, as little as it is worth, say this is one of the absolutely worst ideas Blizzard has come up with.

I don't see this saving 25 mans. Vodka/Exo just merged because the player base is drying up. You have 4 or 5 super servers where everyone flocks to while the rest slowly die. An increased % to get 6 more ilvl won't cut it. Something more drastic needs to be done.

But aren't they leaving because of burnout ? What fix can you do to 25man raiding that fixes burnout ?

I think that has more to do with the nature of that guild type and not with it being 10 vs 25 man. It would certainly be easier to replace less people in a smaller raid but the burn outs would still and have always happened with guilds of that type. Most people can simply not keep that kind of pace indefinitely, especially with the prevalence of having multiple geared alts as well in an attempt to have the perfect comp for a new progression boss.